The optical sensor aspect does have a couple of things going for it though. Firstly for Purposes of Plot it is handy, as the tension rises waiting for the light speed information to arrive to let you know if the other half of your fleet still exists or was destroyed hours ago, and when you exit a jump point you have access to information about the system you've entered but they don't know you are there for hours. The other aspect is that it may be believable when you consider how rapidly optical astronomy has improved over the past decade or so. Without FTL any active radar searches would take twice as long.
clancy688 wrote:Regarding Lost Fleet: The political maneuvering is very intriguing, which is why I'm reading the series and its Lost Stars spin-off.
But the fleet actions are silly at best... ^^
The sensors employed are hilarious. They are relying on passive sensors to observe what's going on. Well, okay, same goes for the Honorverse, where's the difference? For once, those passive sensors can literally look from one side of the star system to the other. To such a degree that they are able to distinguish different ships of the same class over a distance of light hours. And how do those sensors work? They are optical.
